Memorial Day was last week and that means just two things: Summer is HERE and subs filling in on local sports radio stations. While I am psyched Summer is here (though it has been 90 degrees for about a month now), I felt mixed emotions about the subs filling in on 680 The Fan as well as 790 The Zone. While it is certainly nice hearing sports being talked about during the 6-10 AM slot on 680 The Fan (instead of discussing Avril Lavigne like the Rude Awakening crowd was doing its first day back from vacation), I do miss the local flavor of Atlanta/Athens/Georgia being discussed instead of simply a national show. I thought Dari Nowkhah and Jalen Rose, filling in for Mike & Mike on ESPN Radio, which filled in for The Rude Awakening, were fine, especially discussing the Jim Tressel resignation announcement. I just miss some of the local spin to talk about how the Braves were doing with the series against Cincinnati. Oh well.
Also, shrewd move on Tressel’s part to wait until Memorial Day when all of the major players (except for Colin Cowherd) were taking the day off, to announce your resignation. This way he could simply take a beating from the understudies instead of the major players and the news was quasi-lost in the holiday news cycle. Ohio State and Tressel made a wise move deciding to announce it then.
In case you missed it, Sports Central XL held its final webcast of the 2010-2011 GHSA sports season last Wednesday and helped give away some of the Regions Bank Directors’ Cup awards to top programs across the GHSA for this past year. If you want to go back and watch the special episode, check out the replay on gpb.org/sports/xl or hit the link through gaprepnews.com. It was a wild first year for the web program and I can simply say that I was thrilled to be a part of the show along with Alex Ewalt and Mark Harmon. Look for the show to kick back up this August when football gets hot and heavy once again. Georgia Public Broadcasting is expanding its Georgia high school football coverage with two games every Friday this year, one on GPB-TV and one on the website. The schedules are still being nailed down but be sure and check gpb.org/sports and scoreatl.com for the complete schedules. GPB won’t be the only place to catch Georgia high school football this year. WSB and PlayON! Sports recently announced that the two will partner up to broadcast twelve live games on Thursday nights this year. WSB’s Zach Klein and the AJC’s Michael Carvell will call the games after Klein teamed with Chip Towers last year. The games will air Thursday nights at 7:30 on Channel 2.2, a WSB digital channel, then will re-air Friday night/Saturday morning at 1:06 AM.
After a wildly successful first year, the Score 44 is coming back for another run for the upcoming football season. The first eleven debuted two weeks ago on The Official Visit on Sports Radio 790 The Zone and the second eleven were revealed last week. You can hear the third batch this Monday on 790 The Zone from 8-10 PM, and you can also view the list after it is announced on scoreatl.com. As a reminder, this list is constantly changing as senior players can play their way on or off the list with their performances on Thursday, Friday and/or Saturday nights. The changes are announced during The Official Visit, Sports Central XL as well as on the pregame broadcasts for the GPB.org game of the week.
While it doesn’t get the publicity that the NFL or even the NBA draft gets, the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft will be broadcast on the MLB network this Monday. After not having a first round pick last year, the Atlanta Braves will be selecting late in the first round at No. 28. This will be the third straight year that the MLB network will air Day One of its draft, and the MLB Network, which has a growing collection of former players and standout commentators, will also air a draft preview show from 6-7 PM. Sadly the MLB draft will not offer the drama that the NFL and NBA sometimes offers with wild draft-day trades as teams cannot trade picks, but sometimes you will see big-name players drop because he might be represented by a super-agent such as Scott Boras and teams might be scared to draft said player over signability issues. I will certainly be watching this year’s draft simply because I am a fan of the MLB Network personalities moreso than the NFL Network’s personalities. They seem like laid back guys who are happy to still be around the game more than some of the former players on the NFL Network who feel they are deserving of a job simply because they used to play.
Finally, I have said it before in this space but it still holds true: as much as I enjoy the Opposites Attract of 790’s Pollack & Bell in the afternoon, whenever “Arch” fills in for Pollack, his chemistry with Bell is simply a home run. Arch and Bell seem to be cut from the same cloth, and the inside jokes and obscure movie references go over so well with the listener that it is truly enjoyable to listen to the two of them together. It sounds like the fun is real, unlike sometimes when it sounds as though Bell has to oversell the fun because Pollack doesn’t get in on the joke. I hope 790 really does plan to use Arch more now that The Zone is the home of the Falcons. And speaking of fill-ins, I would, in an ideal world, love to hear when 680’s John Kincade is out on vacation as he was last week, to have the King of College Football Chuck Oliver stand in with Buck for four solid hours of college football talk. A guy can dream can’t he?
Can You Believe He Said That
While you mourn the loss of a franchise, they’re waving goodbye with one middle finger.
The AJC’s Jeff Schultz was certainly not happy about losing a hockey franchise but Atlanta is simply TOO big of a market NOT to have a hockey team. Eventually a team like Phoenix, or probably one of the Canadian hockey teams (Edmonton?) will be short on cash and Atlanta will come up as a potential destination. So we don’t have hockey for a few years. Relax. Hockey WILL return but hopefully Don Waddell and the ASG stays away.
No comments:
Post a Comment